


Fields of Gold

by PenguinofProse



Series: Fix-it fics for S7 [4]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bellamy is a mythology nerd, But a Little Smut, F/M, Hugging, Post-Series, episode speculation: 7.16, kind of, kind of a 7.13 fix-it, not much smut, secondary character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-29
Updated: 2020-09-29
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:21:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26719699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PenguinofProse/pseuds/PenguinofProse
Summary: In which Clarke transcends and finds out what's on the other side. Angst and trauma-processing with a happy ending.
Relationships: Bellamy Blake/Clarke Griffin
Series: Fix-it fics for S7 [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1927285
Comments: 80
Kudos: 240
Collections: favorite stories





	Fields of Gold

**Author's Note:**

> I hope this is how it ends.
> 
> This picks up at some hypothetical future moment where Clarke transcends. Jaha has been both running the simulation and appearing in the simulation - please bear with me on that, I happen to believe it makes for a less problematic plot than the show itself has recently presented! Huge thanks to Stormkpr for betaing this, and for her awesome encouragement and support. Happy reading!
> 
> Content note: references to depression, suicide, PTSD, anxiety (including panic attacks), non-con, guns, bereavement, and pretty much everything else grim we see in canon.

Clarke wakes up to a harsh yellow light.

She blinks. She blinks again. Still light, still harsh, still yellow. Is this it? Is this transcendence? Is this really the golden future Bellamy bought into?

She can't move. Why can't she move? Oh God – have they destroyed her brain as they destroyed Madi's? No. She can blink, she reminds herself firmly. Blinking, harsh yellow light. What the hell is this? If this is transcendence, then she's definitely not convinced it was worth all that fuss.

"Clarke. Just lie still while we get you out of the chair."

She gasps in shock. Huh. Seems like gasping is something she can do, too – gasping and blinking. And after the gasp, she never quite manages to return to normal breathing. Because she recognised that voice – that was Bellamy, beyond a shadow of a doubt.

But it can't have been Bellamy, because Bellamy is dead.

"Just keep breathing, Clarke. It takes a couple of minutes to disconnect you. But you're fine, just breathe for me."

Disconnect? What the hell? And why is Bellamy going on about breathing, anyway? That seems like a special kind of torture – to have someone she loved, who's not breathing any more because she shot him, reminding her to keep breathing now.

Oh. Maybe this is hell. Maybe she failed the test, and instead of transcending she's gone and done the opposite. She wonders what the opposite of transcendence even is – an endless fall into the abyss, perhaps?

She's still not breathing right. She can feel herself panting, panicked, like she did when she first lost Madi.

"I told you I wasn't the right choice for this." She hears Bellamy mutter.

"You are. I knew she'd want it to be you." A voice she immediately recognises as Thelonius Jaha of all people insists.

This is getting beyond strange. Are all her dead friends and relatives and lovers going to appear to torment her? She spirals deeper into panic at the thought.

"You're OK, Clarke. You're OK. Just breathe out slowly. You'll be disconnected soon." Bellamy murmurs.

"Disconnected?" She gasps out the question. Huh. It seems like she can talk, too. Blinking and gasping and talking – that's a lot of functions, but none of them seem like the most useful tools to enjoy the afterlife.

"Disconnected." Bellamy echoes softly. "You've been in a simulation, you're still hooked up to your fluids and monitors even though you've exited the programme. We're just sorting all that for you now and then you'll be free to go."

There's so much that's incredible in that response that she doesn't even know where to start. She just gasps a bit more, blinks a bit more. That harsh yellow light is still making her wince.

She adds wincing to the list of things she can do.

Suddenly she feels a touch on her hand, warm and soft. That's interesting – physical contact feels much the same here as it did before transcendence, or the underworld, or whatever the hell this is.

"You're OK, Clarke." Bellamy says. She can feel that the touch on her hand is a gentle thumb or finger rubbing against her skin, and figures that must be him. "You're OK. Long breaths out. I know it's a lot to process. We can talk about it once you're out of the chair."

Her head seems to be free, now. She can move it, can turn and look around a good part of the room. The harsh yellow light shines down from above her, but the corners of the small, square room are cloaked in shadow. There's a lot of machines on her right, there's Bellamy stroking her hand on her left.

Jaha keys something into one of the machines, then makes a satisfied sort of sound.

"That's everything technical done." Jaha announces. "I'm sure I can leave Bellamy to get you out of the chair and explain everything?"

He phrases it as a question, but he doesn't wait for an answer. Rather he marches clean out the door, almost before he has finished speaking. Clarke gets the distinct impression that he is running away. That makes her think that she's not going to like this explanation she has been promised very much at all. She's known Jaha all her life, and he's always had something of a habit of avoiding or putting off difficult decisions and conversations.

And then she's left alone with Bellamy.

Bellamy, who she shot oh so recently, in what was apparently a simulation.

She can't work out whether that bothers him or not. She can't work out whether he even _remembers_ it. There's something sad and heavy in his eyes, perhaps, and dark shadows beneath them. But he's almost always been that way in the time she has known him, much though it pains her to admit it. And apart from that he looks really healthy. He looks _good_ , she thinks, and it makes her heart hiccup nervously in her chest. He looks well and his muscled arms are straining against his T shirt in that way she always admired a little too much.

He's treating her too tenderly to be angry about the shooting, she decides. He's unstrapping her from the chair, now, starting with her ankles, then working up her torso and lastly to her arms. Forgiveness has always been what they do best, of course, but if he's still acting like this towards her and he _does_ remember it? Well, then. Then he would certainly be better than she has ever deserved. She always knew that, of course, but this would really seal the deal.

The moment she is released from the chair, she sits up quickly and pulls him into a robust hug. Obviously she does. She thought he was _dead_ , that she killed him, and instead she finds that he is alive and well and treating her with kindness.

But he doesn't hug her back.

Startled, upset, she pulls away. That hug reminded her all too strongly of the hug she gave him on Bardo, seconds before he betrayed her. She doesn't like it.

Apparently he does remember the shooting after all.

"You shot me." Sure enough, he points that out, accusation in his tone. "Forgive me if I don't want to sit around and hug."

She ought to apologise. That's what any normal, functional person would do at this point. But she hasn't felt normal or functional in quite some time, so of course her brain jumps somewhere else entirely.

"That's why you told Jaha you weren't the right person to help get me disconnected." She concludes easily.

He looks at her like she's crazy to even be prolonging this conversation. "Yes."

"So why are you here?"

He turns his head away, jaw clenched firm. "Because he's the Chancellor, and he ordered me to be here." He sucks in a breath. "And because being angry with you doesn't mean I want you to suffer. I – I don't want to sit around and hug. But I do want you to be OK."

She finds herself gasping again, tearful. That's it – that's her final proof that Bellamy Blake is altogether too good for her.

"Thank you." She tells him softly.

To her surprise, Bellamy continues. "I've had a while to think about what you did and I'm still no closer to making my peace with it."

"Me neither."

He nods. She gasps, tries to breathe out slowly like he told her to just now. It's difficult – she's always found it harder to breathe without Bellamy or Madi around to remind her she still has hope.

Then Bellamy starts talking, eyes hard, tone strangely soft. "I have a lot to explain to you, Clarke. Some of it – some of it _sucks_. But you need to know the truth." A pause. "I'm really not the right person to be telling you this."

"You are." She reassures him, because frankly she cannot imagine anyone she would rather wake up to see by her bedside. She loves her daughter more, she supposes, but that's a very different relationship. Bellamy is the person she would always choose to break bad news to her and support her through it.

He doesn't want to support her just now, though. She needs to remember that, and not throw herself into his arms when this mysterious bad news breaks.

He nods cautiously. "You can go to Wells afterwards if you need to talk to – to someone you haven't shot recently." It sounds like he's trying to make a joke, but they both know full well that it's far too soon to joke about this. In fact, she's pretty certain it will _always_ be too soon.

"Wells is alive?"

"Everyone you loved on the Ark is alive. Your parents, Wells and his dad. I even heard you dated Riley once." He says, a hint of his old warm humour peeping through.

She's not laughing, though. She's too busy noticing that he phrased that very precisely.

"Everyone I loved on the Ark?" She asks, apprehensive, anxiety simmering in the pit of her stomach.

"Yeah." He swallows. "This is the hard part, Clarke. This was a simulation, conducted on the Ark by Jaha, to explore whether humanity would survive the return to the ground. So everyone you loved on the Ark is alive. But the people we met on Earth and Sanctum and Bardo – not them. They're not alive. They never were. They were part of the programme."

"Madi." She gasps, just one desperate word.

"Clarke -"

"Madi." She repeats, firmer.

"She was part of the programme." Bellamy tells her, tears in his eyes despite the conflict between them. "I'm sorry, Clarke. She's not here."

"She's not real." Clarke chokes out. "I had a daughter and she's not real. I – I _killed_ you to save her, and she's not real."

"She's real to you." He says firmly. "She might not be flesh and blood, but the love you have for her, that's real. Everything you feel about her and went through with her is a real part of your experience." He pauses. "There's a book that was famous on Earth before the bombs, with this quote that says just because something happened inside your head, doesn't mean it's not real."

She shakes her head. This is not a time for quotes from books. This is a time for weeping, gasping, trying to process the fact that she literally _killed_ this man to protect a daughter she never even had.

Only he's not dead, she reminds herself. He's here. He's alive, and although he's angry with her, he still doesn't want to see her suffer.

Through all this pain and confusion, there's one matter on which she is clear.

"Jaha was right. You were the right person to tell me this. Thank you."

Then she bolts out of her chair and flees from the room.

…...

She's not only running away from Bellamy, she decides, a couple of minutes later as she finds herself in familiar hallways she thought she would never see again. She's also running towards Thelonius. She has something to tell him.

He's going to get the remaining people out of that simulation.

She intends to inform him of that, not ask him nicely. He will do it, or she will find something to leverage over him to talk him into it. Isn't that what she does best? Coming up with inhumane ways to bend people to her will?

She really is a monster. But he made her that way, and she's not about to sit around and let him torture anyone else any longer. She can't believe that her best friend's father would do all this, would torture his people for the sake of answering a simple question.

Or maybe she can.

Hasn't she done worse, before now, to save her people? She understands better than anyone the lengths a leader might go to in order to ensure the survival of the human race.

She needs to decide how to convince Jaha to do what she wants. Focusing on that will help her friends still in the simulation, but it is also helping Clarke, right now. It gives her something to concentrate on, a reason to keep her mind switched on. Later, when all this is done, she can break down about Madi and Bellamy and the talent she has for losing everyone she cares about, in one way or another.

By the time she knocks at the door of his quarters and he answers, looking apprehensive, she has a plan.

"I'll go public." She announces without preamble. "You let my friends out of the simulation, or I'll go public."

"The people already know about the simulations. They have all taken part." He says, a thin veneer of calm barely disguising his nerves.

"But very few of them know how bad it got, how bad it's still getting." Clarke surmises easily. "Most of them died early and snapped out of it long ago. You wouldn't still be in power if the majority knew everything that happened. No one will support you if I tell them how many times you watched me hold a gun to my head. Or that you tortured me to the point I either killed or was about to kill everyone I loved. Think of what you did to Murphy and Raven and Bellamy and Octavia, too. The way you toyed with Raven's disability? The way you had a character in your programme rape Murphy? Most of the population don't know about that, do they? You've convinced people to keep quiet, somehow. But I won't – unless you get my friends out of there."

There's something very satisfying about watching Jaha lose confidence as Clarke keeps talking. By the time she reaches her final point, she knows she's won. She can see it in the resignation in his face.

"It was almost over anyway." He says, trying to save face. "You transcended. The others wouldn't be far behind."

There's something that's puzzling her, here. "So time runs the same there as here? I know Octavia at least was going to walk through behind me."

"It's more complicated than that." Jaha informs her smartly. "The simplest way of explaining it is that time isn't proportional between the two. The simulation moves slower when the programme has to do something complicated, but mostly it runs faster. You've only been in there a couple of years."

A couple of years. A couple of years to live what she thought were centuries of life, including cryosleep. A couple of years to lose everyone she loved, and with them her sanity.

She draws back her shoulders and looks Jaha right in the eye. "You'll let them out _now_."

He doesn't argue further. "Yes. I know your parents will want to see you. They still have their old quarters."

She nods, and goes on her way.

…...

It's still not the time for weeping, Clarke tells herself as she walks down familiar hallways. She just needs to hold it in a little longer. She needs to make it through reuniting with her parents and with Wells. That's the deal she makes with herself, a desperate bargain – hold it together for long enough to have a coherent conversation with her loved ones, and then she can lock herself in her room to weep.

The thing is, that doesn't sound like a very _nice_ plan. She'd rather weep into Bellamy's shoulder, or perhaps even Wells. But she's pretty sure she doesn't deserve to share her sorrow with a friend, after everything she's done.

She knocks on the door of her old family quarters. Perhaps it's silly to knock, but it wouldn't feel right to just walk straight in. This doesn't seem like home, any more.

"Come in." Her father calls.

This is so strange. This is _beyond_ strange. That's her father, alive and well and welcoming her in.

She steels her courage, opens the door, and steps right through.

"Clarke!" He jumps to his feet, strides over to hug her. "We didn't know you were disconnecting today. Welcome back! How are you doing?"

That's a lot of words. That's a lot of words from a man she thought was dead, and it takes her a second to decide how to answer.

"Fine."

He doesn't look impressed.

"Come on, sit down and tell me about it. Your mum is in surgery – like I said, we had no idea you'd be out today."

She nods helplessly.

Her father helps her out. "It's an odd adjustment, isn't it? I was one of the first to disconnect. Remember everyone you see around you has gone through it too, so you have plenty of support if you need it."

She nods again.

That's when he works it out. "Want to tell me what happened?" He asks softly. "Your mum said it got bad, but looking at your face I'd say it got _worse_ after she disconnected."

"She didn't disconnect. She _died_." Clarke bites out, tears starting to threaten. "She died to me, anyway. I thought she was dead."

"I know. I know. It's hard to handle."

"I thought I lost _everyone_. I lost her. I lost Bellamy. I lost Madi."

"Yes. He – he told us."

That pulls her up short. There was her father, acting like this was all news to him. But Bellamy has told them what happened? They've been speaking about her, while she was stuck there, plugged into that damn torture machine?

"He told you?" She echoes.

Her father realises his mistake – she can see it in his eyes. But as he has always done, he owns to it and forges ahead. "Yeah. Of course he told us. He spent years of simulation time working with you and your mum – of course the first thing he did when he disconnected was come to update us."

"What did he say?" She asks, feeling small.

"He said that you were in a really bad place." He admits openly. "He said that you were the one who killed him. That – that had us pretty worried. It didn't sound like you. It made us realise you were really hurting."

She nods. She was really hurting. She _is_ really hurting.

Her father continues. "He's been campaigning for Jaha to disconnect you since the moment he got out. He said he was worried that you'd been tortured so far you wouldn't recover."

Another nod. She's getting good at nodding. Nodding, blinking, gasping. Maybe Bellamy's right – maybe she won't recover from this.

"He's still got your back." He concludes.

That's what breaks her. That's what has her sobbing, hot tears rolling down her cheeks as she gasps with her mouth open, tasting salt.

"He hates me." She chokes out. "He's so angry with me. I killed him."

At once her father is there, hugging her tight. "You're OK, Clarke. You'll work it out. He wouldn't be so frantic about getting you out of there if he didn't still care, would he?"

She nods. Nodding. That's her talent, right now.

"Remember your mum got me killed, in the simulation. And it took us a while but we're happy together again now."

"That was different. She didn't pull the trigger."

"It's the same issue, the same grief." He sucks in a breath. "I thought we'd break up, for a while. She killed me, and the last thing she remembered was being deeply in love with Kane. She told me all about what she did to save him. I thought we were done. But it was your mum who fought for us. She said she didn't want it to be over. And that she loved me first, loved me on the Ark, but her relationship with Kane was a relationship for the time and place they were together on Earth."

She supposes that's supposed to be comforting. She supposes the moral of the story is that she's supposed to fight for Bellamy.

But she's a little stuck on that last point – _a relationship for the time and place they were together on Earth._ Is that true of her and Bellamy, as well? Is that why things unravelled when he went back to space, or went to Bardo and Etherea? Is that why she killed him, on Sanctum?

She's not brave enough to think about that question, right this moment.

"What about Wells?" She asks. It's a complete change of subject, but her father does not argue. He seems to understand that she cannot face talking even indirectly about Bellamy any longer.

"He's well. He's in lock up, but I'm sure they'll let you see him."

"Lock up?" She's stunned. How has that happened?

"Just until the simulations are over, that was the deal. Justice is much more... _just_ now than it used to be up here. That's been one of the good outcomes of the simulations. But Wells was getting dangerous, pulling all sorts of stunts to try to get the simulations cancelled and you guys out of there."

Her heart swells with pride. "He was rebelling? Protesting?"

Her father nods. "Anything he could think of. He burnt the tree, cut off power to the simulation rooms, kept setting off the fire alarms. He got caught with Jasper in the end, trying to trap Thelonius in his office."

This. This is a bit of good news, a golden light at the end of the tunnel. Wells is alive, Jasper is alive, and the two of them have been leading prank-filled protests together.

Maybe she's not so alone, after all.

…...

Sure enough, she is allowed to go see Wells. She finds him in a cell with Jasper, Monty and Harper sharing the cell next door.

They all seem absurdly happy. They press against the doors, reaching through open windows with hands to squeeze her own. This is a very different place from the skybox she remembers, she finds herself thinking.

Maybe there really can be hope and happiness, here. Just as soon as she finishes mourning the daughter she never had, makes her peace with the man she loves but killed.

"Clarke! No one told us you were out!" Jasper crows.

"Finally, a decent chess partner!" Wells adds.

"You take that back, Wells Jaha." Harper bites out, teasing. "I'm doing OK."

"How are you, Clarke?" It's Monty who asks the question.

"Fine." She lies, as she did to her father.

They look at her, unimpressed. She wonders when Wells learnt how to mimic Monty's best cynical frown. Clearly her friends have been getting to know each other in her absence.

"I don't know." She amends, nervous.

"That's OK." Harper tells her right away. " _I don't know_ is pretty much how everyone feels, at first."

"Bellamy told us what happened." It's Wells who offers that, which surprises her. The idea of him and Bellamy having a civil conversation is something of a revelation. "It'll be OK, Clarke. You two will work it out."

Jasper nods. "That guy's still obsessed with you, don't worry. He spent way too long telling us how worried he was about you."

She chokes out a wet laugh. Jasper hasn't got any better at tact, she notes.

Then Monty speaks up softly, a serious look on his face. "Jordan was code, too. So – so let us know, if you want to talk about that. If you want to talk about losing your kid."

She nods, throat too thick with tears to speak. But her friends get the picture – she can tell that, from the gentle looks and careful smiles. It feels so good to still have friends, she decides. She thought these people were lost to her forever, but now they are smiling at her and offering to support her in her grief.

She doesn't deserve them.

She doesn't deserve anyone. She's a monster, a monster who gets people she cares about killed.

"You're doing OK, Clarke." As if he has heard her thoughts, it's Wells who speaks up. "What my dad did to you, to everyone – it's awful. Completely beyond justification. But we've got a good support network here, OK? We'll help you out."

She nods, tries to pull her thoughts into some semblance of order.

"You'll be out of here soon." She tells them all. "They're ending the simulation now, disconnecting the last few people."

More smiles. More hands squeezed. More well-wishing.

She takes her leave of them and heads home.

…...

It's strange, living with her parents again. Her mother is still in surgery by the time she gets back, and her father is sitting a little too carefully with his book on the couch. He's trying to look casual, as if he just happens to be there to greet her when she gets home, but she knows full well he was deliberately waiting to check she's doing OK.

"I'd going to head to my room. I'd like some privacy." She says awkwardly. "I've got a lot to process."

Her father nods. "Yeah. Sure. Your mum will be home in a couple of hours, but you come to us when you're ready, OK? It's going to feel strange moving back in here."

She nods. Both because he's right, and because nodding is something she can do, now.

She walks to her room, closes the door. She removes her shoes with painstaking care then sits on the edge of the bed.

She waits for the tears to come.

They don't, though. For some reason, after all those difficult conversations where she was trying not to sob, her eyes are dry, now. And it's annoying, because she needs the catharsis of a good cry. She needs a chance to let it all out, here and now, so the sadness does not spill over when she's trying to look functional in front of her friends and family.

It's been such a strange day. To find out that people she thought were dead are living, that she has her old friends once more, even as she loses the daughter she loves the most. It's just beyond weird.

It makes her realise more than ever that human lives are not something to give or take lightly. It's not like she can swap Wells for Madi – that's not how love works. Her joy at being reunited with him does not outweigh her grief. The two things just exist, side by side, in an uncomfortable sort of clash or paradox.

No. That was a mistake. A paradox is too much like an oxymoron, and an oxymoron is too much like thinking about Bellamy.

Damn it. That's when she starts crying, skips weeping and heads straight for full-on sobs. That's the thing that finally breaks her once and for all. Grieving her daughter is horrible, of course it is. But she's lost people she loves before now, and she supposes she'll lose them again. That's part of life, unfortunately. It's a clean sort of grief, more or less. It's complicated a little by the knowledge that Madi was only ever part of the programme, but it's otherwise straightforward, for all that it's painful.

There is nothing straightforward about her grief for her relationship with Bellamy. If the loss of Madi is a clean wound, then the loss of his love and trust and support is like a festering, weeping sore. It's there, nagging at her mind, every second of every minute of every hour. And yet despite the pain, she still finds herself clinging to some delusional hope that she might be able to heal their relationship, with time.

She remembers her father's words from earlier, about her mother fighting for him. But they don't stir much in her, she has to admit.

After all, her fight is over now. Isn't that what it means, to transcend?

…...

Clarke is confused when she hears the knock at the door. She asked her father to give her privacy, and he said that she would be left alone until she chose to come outside. She remembers – she was there.

Her cheeks are still sticky with tears, her eyes and head and heart sore. But she's so used to being permanently on call in her life as a leader inside that simulation, that it doesn't even occur to her to hope this visitor might just go away.

"Who is it?" She calls.

"Me. Bellamy." He clarifies, as if she doesn't recognise his voice by now.

"Why are you here?" She asks, still calling through the closed door. She isn't quite up to inviting him in, right now.

He pauses. "Can I come in?" He asks, sounding uncertain.

She hesitates. She probably should let him in after all. She's being rude. And being rude is nothing compared to shooting him, but it's still not ideal.

He continues before she can decide. "I wanted to thank you for getting O out of there. She's just been disconnected. So I -"

He cuts himself off, abruptly, as she opens the door.

"He did it?" She checks. "They're all out? Are they OK?"

He doesn't answer her. He's too busy staring at her face instead. "You've been crying." He points out, rather unnecessarily she thinks.

She's also not sure it's very accurate. As far as she can tell, she still _is_ crying, just rather slower and less messily than she was earlier.

She shrugs, gestures to him to come in. He does so, and she closes the door behind him.

"So Octavia and the others are awake?" She presses on with the matter at hand. "How do you know?"

"I was there when she was disconnected. For all his faults Jaha always makes sure there's someone they love with them when they wake up." No. No, he's not allowed to say things like that, things that imply she loves him. He's not allowed to point out the truth – not when the truth hurts this much.

"How is she?" Clarke asks, instead of acknowledging his point.

"Sad." He says shortly. "Hope and Lincoln and Diyoza and Indra and almost everyone she ever loved are not real."

"Yeah. I know how that feels." He looks up, sharp. She gets the feeling he's about to say something uncomfortable again, so she presses on. "I should have asked – how are you coping with losing Echo?"

He considers her question for a moment. "OK. I guess I've had a few days to get used to it since I disconnected. It's not like I'm done grieving, not at all, but I guess I'm past the shock stage, you know?"

She nods. She's very good at nodding.

"To be honest, even at first I was more worried about how you were coping with having shot me. Story of my life, that, isn't it?"

She gasps. That sounds to her a lot like an implicit confession that he either loved or loves her despite the circumstances, and she wasn't expecting that.

He presses on before she can even begin to consider picking up on it. "I tried to have a funeral for her, but it didn't really work. Raven was still inside and Monty and Harper were in lock-up, and they're the only other people I think would want to be there. And I didn't know what to say. What do you say, to the girlfriend you never loved as much as you ought to have done? Who wasn't even real? _I'm sorry I kept picking Clarke over you_? The best I managed was to thank her for the times she saved me, but then I remembered I was never even in danger because none of it was real."

"It was real to you. You told me that, earlier today."

He nods. "I guess I should thank her for helping me keep my head together on the Ring."

Clarke spares a moment to notice that this conversation has not gone at all the way she expected. This seems to be a proper deep chat about guilt and feelings, the kind of conversation they used to share when they were on the same page. It's hardly the angry exchange she'd have expected, given the bullet she so recently fired.

But she's not arguing. It's nice to have a tiny slice of normality, at the end of what has been such an abnormal day.

"I'd want to be there." She says, a little impulsive, a little desperate. "If you want to try to have a memorial for her again now Raven's awake and Monty and Harper are free, I'd want to be there too. She was important to you, and that makes her important to me."

He looks shocked for a second, but then he tries to hide it. He almost succeeds. "Thanks, Clarke."

There's a heavy pause.

Bellamy breaks the silence with a loud inhale. "If you want to have a memorial for Madi, I'd want to be at it." He offers.

She shakes her head, tears flowing faster all over again. "No. I can't. Not yet. I can't."

"Hey. Hey, that's OK. There's no rush, Clarke. You're OK." His thumb is stroking her hand again, just like he did when he was trying to calm her down earlier.

She tries to breathe instead of gasping. She thinks that might be a useful improvement to her skill set, all things considered.

"This isn't what I thought transcendence would be like." She mutters, when she can more or less talk again.

He gives a hollow laugh. "Me neither. I was thinking more Elysian fields and fewer fluorescent lights, you know?"

"Elysian fields?"

"The Greek and Roman heaven. They thought there were all these lovely meadows where the people who got a good afterlife hung out having a great time."

She snorts. "And instead this is what I found on the other side."

He tries for a smile, but it doesn't quite reach his eyes. His thumb is still stroking her hand, and she thinks that's interesting coming from a guy who was so dead-set on not hugging her, earlier. His jaw is tense, his shoulders even more so. And yet still he continues with that comforting, gentle touch.

"I'm glad you found me on the other side." He appears to be as surprised at hearing himself say the words as she is.

She snorts. "That's a kind lie."

He bristles. "No. I mean it. Imagine if we got split up because you didn't believe in transcendence – we'd have spent the whole of eternity with our last memories of each other being that – that shot. I couldn't have done that, Clarke. That would have been hell for me."

She gasps. But this gasp isn't panic, somehow. It's more like breathing, only tinged with hope and stunned joy. He doesn't want to spend the rest of eternity stuck on the fact that she shot him. As far as she can see, that implies that he'd like to move on. That he'd like them to set things back to rights, perhaps, or at least to be less at odds.

Maybe her fight is not over, after all.

"I'm sorry." She says, for the first time.

"Clarke -"

"Let me say it, Bellamy." She forces the words out through tears. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

He doesn't tell her she's forgiven. Of course he doesn't – she's pretty sure it would be impossible, actually, to forgive something so major in the course of one short day. He simply nods, jaw clenched, but his hand still in place over hers.

He squeezes her fingers lightly, just once.

And then he stands and strides out the door, but not before she's seen the first tear cut its course down his cheek.

…...

There are good things about this new old life of hers, Clarke decides, in the days that follow.

There are her friends, of course. They're out of the skybox now, and so she eats every meal with Wells. Often the others join them, too – as many of the hundred, plus Raven, as can fit at one long table in the canteen.

The best thing in many ways is the fact that Clarke gets to be a child again, more or less. The first event in the simulation was her father finding the oxygen fault, so now she has woken up a couple of years later to find she's only eighteen.

She hopes that take two at being eighteen involves slightly fewer enormous disasters.

She doesn't have to be a leader any more, and in some ways that's good. She doesn't have the weight of the world on her shoulders. But after all those simulated years of making hard choices, she doesn't know what else to do or who else to be without the burden of responsibilities. It's even worse, of course, because she has no daughter to care for and dedicate her life to. And she doesn't really know how to dedicate her life to herself, and her own happiness. It's something she's never been allowed to practise.

She goes back to her medical apprenticeship, just a couple of days after disconnecting. She follows her mother around, chats lightly with Jackson who's also awake, also looks absolutely wretched.

She doesn't ask him why he looks wretched. She cannot bear to hear the answer.

…...

Clarke knows she wants to fight for Bellamy, but she has absolutely no idea how to go about doing that.

She has even less clue what she's fighting for.

She loves him, or loved him. She knows that much. But she's still so angry with herself for what she did, and so heartbroken over losing Madi, that she cannot decide whether she is fighting for his love or his forgiveness or even just his grudging acceptance.

She mostly fights for him from a distance, those first few days and weeks. She fights for him by throwing herself wholeheartedly into saving lives instead of taking them, and by supporting her grief-stricken friends as best she can – not very well, it turns out. She's too much of a mess herself to have anything useful to say to Octavia.

OK, she's avoiding him. _Fighting for him from a distance_ is a lovely idea. But really it means she's hiding from him while she tries to make peace with what she's done. That's why she's surprised when he sits next to her at breakfast one morning. She was half way through a sentence to Wells, but now her mouth has gone quite dry.

"Morning." Bellamy greets them, as if this is normal.

"Hey. How are you doing?" Wells asks easily.

"Not bad. It sounds like I've got a job teaching history at the school." He offers.

Clarke finds herself smiling automatically – it's just an instinctive reaction to the pride in his tone. "That's great, Bellamy. I'm so happy for you."

He actually turns to look at her. "Thanks. So, hey. That's not really what I came here to say."

She nods, hopes she looks encouraging. She's really an expert at nodding, now.

He continues. "We're going to have a memorial for Echo this evening. Me, Raven, Murphy, Harper, Monty. O might come, depends how she's feeling. Would you join us?"

"Of course. Sure. If you want that."

"I want you there." He confirms, eyes on his breakfast.

Maybe, she thinks, it might be time to dare to fight for him from slightly closer quarters.

…...

She gives that a go, in the days that follow the memorial. It's a difficult one, she thinks – she doesn't want to appear to be pestering him for his forgiveness. But she does want to make it clear that she's sticking around, that she has no interest in abandoning him ever again.

Wells helps. No, it's more than that. Wells is absolutely invaluable, her best friend and rock, but also her biggest supporter. He doesn't just help her to do the easy things, like sitting with Bellamy while they eat. He urges her to do the difficult things, too.

"Why don't you go see Bellamy tonight?" Wells suggests to her over a game of chess one afternoon.

"Can't. I've got a night shift in medical."

"Well why don't you go before that?"

"I need to eat supper."

"I'm sure you can take five minutes out of your day somewhere, Clarke."

"I can't." She doesn't even bother offering an excuse.

"You mean you don't want to. You mean it sounds difficult, that you're nervous of actually going over to his place."

She nods, stiff.

"I think he'd like to see you, Clarke. He was telling me earlier that he's had a tough couple of days with Octavia. He'd like to know you're thinking of him and supporting him."

She frowns. Most people don't seek moral support from their murderer, in her experience. But then again, she and Bellamy always have had a weird relationship.

…...

Needless to say, she goes to see him. The combination of Wells' insistence, her missing him, and the thought of Bellamy sad and lonely is enough to make up her mind.

He's alone in the apartment when he answers the door.

"No Octavia?"

"She doesn't live here any more."

Oh. Wow. That's probably something she should have noticed, she frets.

"She moved out to _get some space_." Bellamy explains. "I think she just wanted to be able to cry all night without me judging her. But that's stupid, because I'm not judging her anyway." He heaves in a shaky breath. "I'd never judge anyone for the damage Jaha did to them."

She nods carefully. "OK. Well. I just wanted to say hi. And – you know, if you need to talk to anyone about what's going on with your sister, I'm here."

He nods, then. She wonders if he's been practising nodding recently, too.

There's a silence. They both look at each other, and Clarke concentrates on her breathing. She's not quite gasping, and that's progress, she thinks.

"Come on in." Bellamy says at last, stepping back and gesturing to a chair. "It's good to see you."

"You too."

There's another pause.

"It would be good to see you more often." Bellamy informs the worn carpet by his left boot. "I know that must sound weird when we're still – yeah. But we're never going to fix this if we never see each other."

"You want us to fix this?" She asks, incredulous. "Even though I – I -"

"I want to fix this." He confirms, interrupting her frantic guilt. "I know why you shot me, now."

That's weird, she thinks. It's weird because _she_ can't really figure out why she shot him, and she was the one holding the gun.

"Go on then. Tell me." She challenges him. That's a bit frightening – she can't remember the last time she felt brave enough to challenge anyone. She's been practising her nodding, remember? But if she's safe to challenge anyone, she figures she's safe with Bellamy.

"It was Jaha. I blame him more than you, I think. Sure, you were the one who pulled the trigger. But he kept that simulation going, torturing you, even though he could see you were in a really bad place. He must have known that you – that your mental health was suffering."

That's putting it mildly, she thinks. She's almost a doctor, and yet she has no idea where to start with unpicking the tangled mix of depression and PTSD and anxiety and sheer _trauma_ that's been swimming around in her head.

She simply nods. She only has so much bravery to spare, these days.

She stops nodding very abruptly when a pair of warm arms close around her torso. This seems to be a hug, but that can't be right. Bellamy doesn't want them to sit around and hug – he told her that himself, that very first morning she was disconnected.

"Bellamy?" She asks, unsure, as she tentatively brings her own arms up around his waist.

"Just hug me, Clarke. Just hug me back." It sounds like he's _begging_ , more than demanding, she thinks. That scares her, has her wondering whether maybe his head is quite a mess right now, too.

Maybe she should offer to help him with that, just as soon as her own is a little more functional.

In the meantime, she hugs him back, hard. She squeezes him tight, buries her nose into the firm muscle just below his collarbone. He still smells like she remembers, she notes. And he still feels the same – warm and solid and reassuringly alive.

"I miss you." He murmurs, and she can hear that he's crying. "I miss you so damn much and I hate it. You shot me."

"I killed you." She corrects him gently. "But we're here now, OK? We get another chance. Elysian fields and all that."

He snorts. "Thanks, Clarke. Hugs and history references. That's what a guy needs at a time like this."

They're still hugging as she chooses her next words. "I've no idea what you need, Bellamy. I wish I did. Right now it still feels like I know nothing at all, like my brain is underwater. But if you tell me what you need, I'll do my best to give it to you."

"I just need you." He says sadly.

Yes. She can see how that could be sad – needing the woman who shot him. That's sort of how she felt, on Bardo, when he betrayed her. There's nothing in this life, or any other life, worse than the pain of being hurt by someone you love.

…...

She fights for him rather more fiercely, after that. They're still not right – either in themselves or together – but at least they spend time in each other's company.

"We're going to the library." Bellamy informs her and Wells and Jasper over supper one evening.

"I'm not." Jasper tells them roundly. "I'm going to see Harper and Monty."

"I'm not." Wells echoes, although he doesn't bother providing a reason.

"Looks like it's just you and me." Bellamy tells Clarke, at least half a smile gracing his face.

Clarke grins. "Great. Books. My favourite."

He laughs, nudges her lightly with his elbow. "Shut up. You know you love hanging out in the library with me."

Yes. She does. But not for the books. And one of these days, she's going to get her head in the right place long enough to tell him that.

…...

It's not all fun and games and library dates. Sometimes there are tougher issues to handle, too. Today, for example, it's about his sister. Clarke thought that maybe they were done with the days of Bellamy making his sister's welfare his all-consuming duty, that perhaps they had left that behind on simulated Earth.

Apparently, she thought wrong.

Octavia has announced to her brother that she intends to pursue a relationship with Jasper, and Bellamy is not happy about it. Of course he isn't. At least this time, Clarke muses, he seems to be more worried about both parties' welfare than about being a patriarchal big brother for the sake of it.

"It's not healthy." He frets, pacing the carpet in his quarters while Clarke looks on.

"It's their choice." She suggests mildly.

"It's not good for either of them. Jasper's better than he was on Earth, but he still drinks too much."

Privately, Clarke thinks that drinking too much is probably relatively minor mental scar tissue compared to what some of them are carting around. If she had a little sister, she thinks she'd rather see them date someone who drinks too much than someone who would shoot their best friend, for example.

Bellamy presses on regardless. "And she's still in such a bad place right now, Clarke. She's lost almost everyone. This is the worst kind of rebound and it's a mistake."

She decides that's enough. She approaches him slowly, grips his forearms firmly but without roughness. And then she looks him right in the eyes.

"You remember when we stood right here in this room, and you told me you needed me? Even though I killed you in the simulation? You know how we rely on each other, we're best friends who hug all the time, even though we've hurt each other more than any other pair of people I know?"

He nods, eyes sad.

"That works for us, right? It's what we both need. I don't think you or I have any right to lecture anyone else about what works for them. If Octavia and Jasper – both adults in their own right – are telling us that this relationship is honestly good for them, that it's helping them heal, we have to trust them."

He hugs her, for that. She knew he would. Little by little, slowly but surely, she's regaining confidence in her own judgement once again.

…...

Clarke isn't surprised when Jaha is forced to step down. She hasn't gone public about her experiences in the simulation, has only told a few people she's close to. But she knows others must have done the same, and so it is that word of the horrors has spread.

It's an interesting situation. On the one hand, Jaha is still loved by a great number of people who think his actions were necessary. He proved that their generation was not ready to return to Earth, and to some folks, that end justifies the means.

Clarke isn't one of those folks. She knows, now, that _how_ you go about doing better is important.

Kane steps into his shoes. It's a good choice – he's loved and respected by those who worked with him on Earth, but he's also got a firm track record as head of security on the Ark. Everyone's happy – or almost everyone, which is as good as politics ever gets, Clarke thinks.

There's only one matter remaining. This reshuffle leaves a space on the council, and Clarke intends to stand for it. Leadership is part of who she is, now, and for all that she hates the more harrowing side of it, she genuinely does feel a call to do her best for her people. She's felt lacking in purpose since disconnecting, despite her internship and her attempts to rebuild her friendship with Bellamy, and standing for office sounds like just the right thing for her.

Bellamy disagrees.

"You're not ready for it." He tells her, annoyed. Maybe even angry. He's striding through the door of her bedroom as if he owns the place.

"You're saying I'm not up to it?" She argues, incredulous. She's been thrust into more demanding leadership positions than this before now and lived to tell the tale – just about.

"No. It's not that at all. I'm saying you should get some more rest first. I'm saying you're not ready to step back into that yet. You need more time to heal, Clarke." He sounds more gentle than annoyed now, and the fact that he's stepped right up into her personal space and laid a hand on her arm helps, too.

She considers his point. He's right in many ways – she still doesn't feel _well_ as such. But she does feel _functional_ , which is plenty good enough, as far as she's concerned. It's more than she felt most of the time she was in charge on Earth and Sanctum, that's for sure.

But he really does seem worried about her wellbeing.

"Then maybe you should do it instead." She suggests sharply. "Either way, I think it's better one of us takes it than one of Sydney's people. Or maybe I should ask Monty or Raven."

To her surprise, he smiles broadly. She thinks back over everything she just said, tries to figure out whether there was anything worth smiling about. Nothing she can think of, but he looks so damn happy – there has to be a good explanation for that.

Sure enough, he provides one. "It's good to see you disagreeing with me again. I was getting so sick of all that nodding."

She laughs, stunned. Shocked joy comes out in laughter rather than gasping, these days, and she thinks that's a good development.

He continues to talk. "I don't want it. I'm not sure I'm ready either. And Monty and Raven are great but... They're not you. Do you think anyone has ever job-shared a council seat before?"

"What are you thinking?" She asks, frowning.

"I'm thinking you and me share it. We support each other through the difficult decisions. We'd only have the one vote, so we'd have to reach an agreement on everything. I think it could be a great way of bringing our voices to the council." He swallows loudly. "And I think it could be really good for _us_ , too."

She hugs him. She doesn't have any other way of expressing quite how deeply she loves him in this moment. She's always tried to solve problems with her head, and she thought that meant she had a monopoly on creative solutions. But she realises, now, that Bellamy's habit of acting from the heart can solve problems, too. He's looked at the situation, and focused on his desire to work with her above all else, and come up with the perfect plan.

"I'd like that." She murmurs against his neck. "You're right. That would be great for the Ark and great for us. Let's do it."

"We have to get people to vote for us first." He teases gently as he pulls away to hold her at arms' length.

"They will." She tells him with conviction. "Just watch them all vote when our entire campaign is me telling them how great you are." She means it as a joke at first, but she finds herself continuing in a more serious vein. "I'm going to tell them all about your loyalty and compassion. And I'm going to tell them about your big heart, and how hard you're working to forgive me now when I've done nothing to deserve it."

There's a tense pause. Clarke presumes it's tense because Bellamy is trying to decide what to say. She supposes he will break the silence, in a minute, to tell her that forgiveness is not about what she deserves or some such kind platitude.

Only it's not _that_ kind of tension. She realises as much, all in a rush, when Bellamy presses his lips to hers.

She kisses him back. She's no fool, for all that her brain still feels a bit scrambled. She kisses him back urgently, hungrily, as if she might lose this chance any moment. She kisses him like that because she knows this is too good to be true, and she expects him to think better of it within seconds.

He doesn't. He keeps kissing her. And then they're doing more than kissing, his hand cradling her breast through her shirt, her fingers stroking his bare back under his clothes.

It's when he reaches for her belt that she comes to her senses.

"We shouldn't." She gasps, breaking the kiss. Back to the gasping again, it seems.

He freezes. "Sorry. Sorry – I thought -"

"I know. I do." She swallows with difficulty. "I just think – this isn't healthy. We shouldn't do this, now, while our heads are still not right and you're still working through forgiving me. It's – it's probably not a good idea. We should wait, see if you still want to once we're really OK again."

"We've always done things in the wrong order." He reminds her, half amused, half sad. "It's part of our very weird relationship."

She nods. Curse it. She was getting so much better at functioning, before this threw her off. She felt almost _normal_ , when she was kissing Bellamy, but now she feels like she's waking up under the yellow glare of the simulation room lights once more.

Bellamy's still cupping her breast, she notes. And she's still got a hand on his lower back. She supposes they ought to move if they're not doing this, but she doesn't much want to pull away.

"You remember what you said to me about O and Jasper?" He asks softly.

She nods again. What does that have to do with anything?

"You said it doesn't matter whether they're still dealing with their trauma. What matters is whether their relationship honestly works for them, whether it really helps. You said that was true about us, too."

She nods once more. Maybe she can see where he's getting at, she thinks.

"OK. So, Clarke, honestly – was that working for you? Was it helping?"

She nods easily. She felt better, there, than she has felt since she woke up. And certainly better than she felt most of her time in the simulation, too.

"OK. And it was working for me." He tells her, confident and straightforward.

She doesn't leave him to join the dots for her. She really is feeling a little more functional, and that moment of panic was clearly just a minor hiccup, a bump in the road. She's feeling able to finish resolving this situation, now.

"It was working for both of us, so we can keep doing it." She concludes. "We can just say stop if we're not comfortable, or we think it's not working."

It's his turn to nod, now.

And it's her turn to start the kiss, reaching up on her toes to press her lips to his, pulling him flush against her by the hand on his lower back.

He laughs into her mouth, a joyful sound, and gets on with kissing her back.

Things move quickly, after that. Clothes are shed, tossed into corners of the room almost at random. And then Bellamy is leading her backwards, settling her back on the bed, easing his cock inside of her.

She gasps, but in a good way. She likes it.

"You OK?" He checks, with a soft kiss by her ear.

"Yeah. Great. Still working." She assures him.

He groans. She takes that to mean it's still working for him, too. He'd let her know if not – they've always been honest with each other.

He starts to build up a rhythm, thrusting against her, but she's not having that. She's not about to lie here and let him do all the work. So she matches him, bucking her hips, dancing off the bed in a way that has him moaning into her open mouth as they kiss frantically.

She comes quickly. She hasn't the energy to be ashamed of that – it's just how it is, when someone you've loved for so long and thought you had lost suddenly declares himself interested in some seriously eager sex. And there's no point being ashamed, anyway, because he's coming not long later, spilling inside of her, collapsing onto her chest.

"Sorry." He mutters sheepishly. "Normally takes longer than that."

She giggles a little. She never thought she would giggle with Bellamy again, and she's beyond grateful to find herself here now.

"I'll prove it to you another time." He says, half solemn promise, half nervous question.

"I'd like that." She agrees easily.

"So that worked for you?" He asks.

"Yeah. It helped. It's good to feel close to you again."

He nods as he eases his weight off her. "You too."

She snuggles into his chest as he lies back on the bed. She's not entirely ready to define what's going on here, but if she had to guess, she'd say that a bit of snuggling seems a good fit for the mood.

Bellamy breaks the silence. "It's funny, right? We never did this in the simulation. It must be the only gesture of love we never tried. And we're finally giving it a go now."

She smiles a little. He's always had this way of blending humour with serious points, and it's one of the things she loves the most about him. "Better late than never." She suggests.

"Yeah. If this works for us, no one can judge us. Not anyone else, and we're not allowed to judge ourselves." He says the words for his own benefit as much as for hers, she thinks.

"You're right. But – I get that this must be really difficult for you." She tells him softly.

"Not as difficult as walking out of that simulation room the day I was disconnected. Knowing you were still in there, knowing you must be falling apart after shooting me, and just having to keep walking."

She gasps, but in a good way, perhaps. She never expected him to admit something like that to her, but it's a pleasant surprise to hear such proof that he cares.

"I still don't understand how I ended up shooting you." She laments, over half way to tears. It's a sentiment she ought to be immune to by now, but somehow, it always bites.

"I know." He says softly, hugging her close.

He stays there all night, and it's peaceful.

…...

Clarke doesn't talk about Madi much.

She can't bear to, for one thing – the tears spring up every time she so much as _thinks_ about her, and that same gnawing anxiety of losing people she loves is only ever just around the corner.

The other big problem? She doesn't know what to say.

Bellamy knows all this, of course. And somehow, in between their occasional sex and constant mutual support, he does what he can to ease her into talking about her loss and processing her grief.

Sometimes she gets annoyed with him for that. She wants to make things right between them, wants to somehow pay back the debt of having shot him. But there's no way she will ever make up for shooting him, if he just keeps being kinder to her than she deserves.

Today, the two of them are sitting side by side in his quarters. Clarke is sketching, Bellamy is reading. She supposes this is probably what a relationship looks like, but she doesn't have the courage to try to analyse whether that's exactly what's going on here. It works for them, and that's all there is to say on the matter.

Clarke hasn't been doing much sketching since she disconnected. She's been struggling to keep her mind on the page, yet she knows it's worth persevering because art can be therapeutic, she's sure of it.

Today, half an hour in, all she's managed is something that looks a little like Bellamy's left ear.

"Did you spend time like this with Madi?" He asks softly. "I know she liked to draw."

Of course he knows that – she shot him over a sketchbook.

She pushes that thought robustly aside and concentrates on something else. "She loved to draw. She was the perfect daughter for me, right? Almost as if Jaha designed her that way." She says bitterly.

Bellamy reaches an arm around her shoulders. "Yeah. It's OK to be upset about that."

"It just – it would be one thing to know she was dead. But not even _real_? I loved a lie. A kid that my best friend's father created for me in a computer programme? It's – it's _sick_."

"It is."

"Sorry. I know everyone loved someone who's turned out not to be real, right? You with Echo, me with Lexa as well. Everyone Octavia loved. I can't complain."

"You can. You have every right to complain. What Jaha did was awful."

She shakes her head, brushes aside the tears. "I know. But it's done now. And I just want to learn how to draw again."

He nods, and lets her get to it.

…...

This really does look a lot like a romantic relationship, Clarke thinks. They hang out together, support each other, and they keep having sex. And it's working, and it definitely helps them both, so that's fine. It's allowed.

She mustn't judge herself for it.

Sometimes she even judges Bellamy for it, if she's being honest. She thinks it's a little naive of him to enter a relationship with his murderer. But she knows that it would be both cruel and self-defeating to point that out, so she just supports him as best as she can.

She's not sure she does very well at all, but she tries.

He's feeling low today. Octavia is having one of her bad days, and Bellamy feels helpless, and he's sitting on Clarke's bed with empty eyes and fists clenched firm while he recounts her horrific fit of grief.

"I don't know what to do, Clarke. I don't know. I'm supposed to protect her."

"You can't protect her from this." She hesitates, wonders whether her next words are wise. "We can never protect the children we love from everything, however much we might want to. Sometimes it's about equipping them to deal with trouble as best we can. As long as you're supporting her, and trying to help her manage the hard times, that's all you can do." It's something she got very wrong, towards the end of that simulation. She can see that now that her head is clearer, can understand that in her panic she was not serving either Madi or her friends at all.

He looks at her, sharp. It's like he can hear the guilt in her words, she muses. Probably he can – they do know each other rather well.

She moves on.

"You need to look after yourself, too." She tells him firmly. "It's important for you to take a break from worrying about her."

"That's why I came here." He admits.

She brightens. "That's good."

He nods. "Yeah. I knew I'd feel better for seeing you."

That makes her feel guilty, of course. But it doesn't make her feel as guilty as it would have made her feel a couple of months ago, so that certainly counts as progress. She sits close by his side on the bed, leans in and tries to share her warmth. She's always found his mere presence reassuring, so she hopes that might work for him, now.

He leans into her in turn, rests his cheek on the top of her hair.

"Elysian fields, huh?" He jokes tiredly.

She's not sure what it is about his tone and the situation that brings out the fight in her. But suddenly she finds that she does not want to nod and accept the melancholy mood. She wants to fight for him, wants to fight to show him that there's still hope.

"If I had to choose an afterlife, it would look a lot like this. I guess the scenery could be nicer, and I wouldn't choose to have the former Chancellor ruining all our lives. But I've got _you_. I've got my parents and more friends than I ever believed I would have. I've got a job I love and I'm even coming back to drawing. There are good things here, Bellamy."

He pulls away. She panics for a moment, wonders whether she has upset him. She still has a tendency to panic easily, but it no longer rules her life.

She hasn't upset him. He just wants to look her in the eyes. "Thanks, Clarke. I needed to hear that. You're right – I've got you, and O, and we're all healing. There are good things here."

"There are good things here." She repeats again, even stronger.

He nods. They sit for a moment, digesting, thinking. And then he makes her gasp in the best of ways.

"I forgive you." He says, just like that. As if the words come to him easily, after all these months. "I don't think I'll ever forgive Jaha – he's not even sorry, and it was really his fault. But I forgive you."

She nods, helpless to form words, weeping happy tears. She throws herself haphazardly towards him, knows he'll catch her before she falls.

He always does.

They make love slowly, after that. They have a habit of rushing it, or at least that's the way it has mostly been so far. Clarke supposes that's a feature of using sex as a bit of a crutch, something that _helps_. But today something feels different as they set a steadier pace. It feels more like they're making love for the sake of it, enjoying it rather than using it as a tool to outrun their trauma.

As they kiss softly, as Clarke pulses around Bellamy's cock and feels him sigh into her mouth, she wonders for the first time since disconnecting whether this might be what true happiness feels like.

…...

It's been the best part of a year since Clarke disconnected by the time she feels ready to have a memorial for Madi.

She's surprised how many people attend. Almost every one of the hundred is here, as well as Jackson and Raven and even Sinclair – more or less every person she has ever considered a friend.

Apart from those who were never real, of course.

Her mother and Kane do the talking. She planned it that way, because she knew she would not be capable of producing words. Bellamy sits by her side, of course, clasping her hand tightly through it all.

It's difficult. There are tributes to the liveliness of a girl who never lived, to the moral integrity of a child who was built of computer code. It's every bit as harrowing as Clarke knew it would be, in short.

And yet she's pleased to be here – or pleased when it's done. That's one step closer to closure, she hopes.

…...

It takes her a few days to bounce back from Madi's memorial. She's annoyed with herself for that, and Bellamy's annoyed with her for being annoyed at herself. Of course he is – he never could resist an opportunity to bicker with her.

"I don't get why you're still here." She rants at him, tearful. "If you're so frustrated, why are you sitting on my bed?"

"Because we're dating, last thing I checked." He says mildly.

Well, now. He's never put it like that before – neither of them has.

He continues. "I'm here because I want to be, OK? Because I'm trying to convince you to take care of yourself. I want to support you."

She shakes her head. "It's not fair. It's not fair, Bellamy. You give me _everything_ – me, the woman who _killed_ you – and all I ever give you is emotional baggage."

"You've been helping me with my emotional baggage from almost the moment we met." He informs her smartly.

She frowns. That might be true, but he's still given more than she has, she's pretty sure.

"Anyway, you're looking at it wrong." He tells her, softer now, taking her hand. "Love isn't logical. I can't just switch off caring about you when I get annoyed or you make a mistake. Yeah, you shot me, and I was angry about that. But I never stopped caring."

"You were the right person." She murmurs. "I know you didn't believe it at the time. But you being there to disconnect me even after what I'd done – that meant so much, Bellamy."

They sit around and hug for most of the rest of the day. He seems to have changed his opinion about that idea, over the last year or so.

…...

Clarke isn't _fixed_. She's not sure she will ever be fixed – she's becoming increasingly convinced that such terminology is not much use, when it comes to the state of her head.

But she's doing an awful lot better, overall. The bad days are fewer and further between, and she has the support of people she loves to talk her through them.

And the best thing of all? It's the feeling of victory that comes with having hit rock bottom and survived. She has hated herself, she has thought she honestly deserved to die. And yet she's still here, still breathing, and she's proud of herself for that. If there's one thing she knows from her training in medical, it's that mental health is complicated, and that coping with trauma is an achievement in and of itself.

That's a positive outlook she could never had dreamed of reaching, that day she shot Bellamy in the chest.

…...

There's a very definite moment when Clarke realises her relationship with Bellamy is real, and solid, and not going to disappear in a flash of golden light. It's the moment their friends start teasing them about it.

"Are we playing chess this evening?" Wells asks her over breakfast, one morning.

"No. We're all going to have a movie night." Raven declares, inserting herself into the conversation.

"She's not doing either of those things. She's spending the evening screwing my brother." Octavia says, mock horrified, nose wrinkled. She's learning how to joke again, and Clarke thinks that would be a good thing, were the joke about literally anything else.

"I'm not." She defends herself weakly. Frankly, she probably is, but she's not sure how she feels about discussing her sex life over porridge.

"You so are." Murphy argues. "Saw him at the gym early this morning. Way too much energy, you know? The guy needs to get laid."

Clarke flushes. Bellamy _got laid_ last night, as it happens. Twice. But she's not about to tell Murphy that.

At that moment, of course, Bellamy himself wanders over, breakfast tray in hand. He sits himself at Clarke's side, presses a kiss to her cheek, and asks what he has missed.

She wonders where to begin.

Murphy, of course, has no such inhibitions.

"We're choosing your entertainment for the night, Councillor Blake. You can either watch your girlfriend play chess with another guy, watch a movie with all of us, or take her to bed."

Bellamy splutters on a mouthful of water. "What?"

"They're teasing us." Clarke informs him, not very usefully, but accurately.

"I noticed."

It is Jasper, of course, who has the final word. "Do what you like, guys. Chess or movie or... that. But you'd better not be going at it like rabbits while the rest of us are trying to watch _Avengers_."

This time it is Clarke who chokes on her water, and Bellamy slaps her heartily on the back. He's a good guy, all things considered. And sometimes, in moments like this, she allows herself to believe that she might be one of the good guys, too.

…...

Clarke shouldn't be surprised to get pregnant. She's been sleeping with Bellamy rather regularly for a couple of years by the time it happens. And yeah, sure, her implant is meant to last a decade. But really, she almost ought to _expect_ it to fail, she thinks, based on her life story. Probably some drugs in the IV she had to keep her alive whilst she was in the simulation interfered with it, she supposes. She ought to warn Octavia and Raven and the others to take care.

But probably she ought to talk to Bellamy first.

She puts it off for a long time. She just cannot face it, somehow. They've been going steady for a while but does he really want to father a child with the woman who murdered him? It seems unlikely at best, she thinks. And they've never spoken about love or commitment before, only about the fact that what they are doing works and helps, here and now. So she's not convinced that he wants an obligation to stay with her into the future.

She puts it off for even longer. She's in danger of starting to show, soon, and he must have noticed the changes to her breasts. Maybe he'll work it out on his own, and she won't have to tell him? No, that's deceptive and cowardly. He deserves better than that.

Still she puts it off.

Until one day he marches into her room and informs her that he knows her news.

She doesn't gasp. That's not something she does much, these days – only occasionally. But she does blink while she takes a moment to process this development.

"How did you find out?"

"Your dad told me. He said he figures that telling people things they need to know seems to be his calling in life."

Clarke snorts. She's annoyed with her father, yes. This was her private business. But she struggles to stay angry for long with any of the people she thought she had lost, but has since found once more.

"So it's true?" Bellamy presses. "It's real? We're having a baby?"

"I'm pregnant." She confirms. That seems like the easiest place to start.

He steps forward, tugs her into a hug. "We're having a baby." He mutters against her neck. "This is – wow, Clarke. We're having a _baby_."

Well, then. It seems like they're having a baby. She already knew she wanted to keep it, but now that Bellamy is so unashamedly enthusiastic she supposes that they definitely are having a baby.

Wow.

"I'm sorry I didn't tell you." She mutters. "I didn't mean to hide it. It's just – it was hard." She concludes, inadequate but honest.

"I get that. It's OK. I love you." He whispers fervently.

She freezes. He freezes. And then he lets out a nervous laugh.

"So emotions are running high." He comments, trying for a light tone.

"I love you too." She tells him, almost exasperated, wondering about tagging an affectionate joking insult onto the end. Really, after two realities and several years together, _that_ is how the love confession plays out?

It's very right for them, she decides easily. In the heat of the moment, just like everything they have ever shared.

They're still hugging. She presses a kiss to Bellamy's neck, feels him inhale carefully and begin to speak.

"We've got a lot to do. I was thinking we could move in together, if you're up for that. It might make things easier. Also I love you and _want_ to live with you – there's that too."

"Let's do it." She decides easily. It feels right – she has lived with her parents and played at reclaiming some of her lost innocence quite long enough. She must be the only councilwoman in the history of the Ark still to live with her parents, she thinks.

"OK. Great." He sucks in another breath. "This might be harder." He warns.

She pulls away, just enough to look at his face. "What might be?"

"Names." He says simply. "I know we have a while to think about that, but I wanted to say right from the start – if it's a girl and you want to call her Madi, that's OK. You'd have my full support."

She gasps, sharp tears stinging at her eyes. But as with every rare gasp, these days, this is followed by a couple of long, slow breaths and the steady comfort of Bellamy's arms.

She gathers her courage and speaks.

"We mustn't. That was _her_ name. Even if she wasn't real in body she was real in spirit – real to me – and I don't want to try and replace her."

"I know. I get that. But I wanted to say right now that – whatever you choose, I'll still love you."

That's the story of their lives, isn't it? No matter how many bad choices they throw at each other, their love remains constant.

And this? Standing in Bellamy's arms and sharing words of love and making plans to move in together? Seizing their second chance at the happy ending they never got to share on Earth? Making the most of this afterlife that is, to the best of their knowledge, more real than the life they lived before?

This is, without doubt, the right choice.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
